Waking Up From a Bad Dream About the Arizona Immigration Law

            The “American dream” is the widespread aspiration to become an American, work hard, and live a happier and more successful life. The American dream was actually formed before the United States itself when people across seas imagined the opportunities that may come out of the new and unexplored land in the form of property, gold, and general happiness.  Some people portray the American Dream as a “classless society” with equal opportunity for all who wish to obtain it. Also, the American dream assumes that people do not discriminate against race, gender, or religion. However when Arizona recently enacted the broadest and strongest immigration law in the country, the ”American Dream” ceased to exist to its full extent because the law leads to racial profiling and discrimination.

After studying the Arizona Immigration Law, I realized that this is one of the first laws proposed that clearly discriminates against a race of people since the civil war. The proposed bill is an excuse for Arizona to discriminate against anybody based on skin color. The law allows police to check a person’s immigration status if they suspect that he or she might be in the United States illegally. They can pick anyone out of a crowd of people and force them to prove whether or not they are legally in the country or not. I understand that Arizona created the law as an attempt to take the illegal immigrant measures into its own hands because the federal government was not and it was designed carefully to help Arizona fix the illegal immigrant “problem”. However, I feel that there must be other ways to control borders that does not result in racial profiling. At one point in time almost everybody in the United States were immigrants and many of those immigrants contribute to the greater good of the United States. For instance, my father’s grandfather came to America from Latvia to fulfill the “American Dream”. He brought over what ended up becoming three generations of doctors, contributing to the American public. Immigrants, like my great grandfather, came to the United States hoping to join the “melting pot” of a nation and to be accepted into the land where freedom rings. It is legislation like the Arizona Immigration Law that contradicts the “American Dream” because the “American Dream” supports freedom for all.

By making it difficult for new immigrants to come illegally into the country, Arizona is saying they do not want the “American Dream” to exist for a specific group of people. Whereas, I believe that the “American Dream” should continue because the United States was formed on the foundation that the “American Dream” is available for everyone who aspires to retrieve it no matter what race, gender or religion.  Even though many do not support the flow of immigrants coming into America and new legislation is becoming past, immigration will never cease to exist as long as there are job options available and an opportunity to improve the quality of life.

The “American Dream” may never be as pure as it was back in the 1660s when people conjured up hopes and wishes for the new country but hopefully it will not disappear completely.  Happiness may not be as easily attained as the “American Dream” makes it sound but through hard work and opposition to proposed bills like the Arizona Immigration Law; the concept of the “American Dream” may be in reach for most immigrants in the future.